


Part of the Circus

by Ally147



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Birthday Parties, F/M, Modern AU, Pre Relationship, clown!peeta, implied prim/thom, katniss likes it though, rated for swearing only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 15:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9277904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ally147/pseuds/Ally147
Summary: Katniss is too mature to be harbouring ridiculous crushes on clowns-for-hire, that’s for certain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I posted a pretty abysmal version of this story to the PiP Final Tribute round under the title 'Send in the Clowns'. It was rushed, unedited and by no means at all my best work. This version is about 4500 words longer and about a thousand times better.
> 
> Word of warning, I'm Australian, so this is written using English English, not American English.

It’s demonic. There can’t be another word for it. The sound of it grates on her soul and twists her insides like nails on a chalkboard, fills her with that icy sort of terror that must only come when the end is nigh. Muffled by the door as it is, Katniss shudders as another hellish peal of it sounds through.

 

Fuck that stupid saying that says an angel gains its wings whenever a child laughs. Get enough of the evil little hell-spawns giggling—if that is what they’re doing—en mass and she’s sure Satan’s palace gains another spire.

 

Who even cares that it’s her own nephew’s sixth birthday party beyond that door. It’s more than that: it’s a birthday party filled with every last one of his classmates, and Katniss’ tolerance for children who aren’t her blood only goes so far, not to mention their obnoxious, holier-than-thou private school parents.

 

Katniss sways on the doorstep, quivering hand curved into a fist and poised to knock. She hasn’t even seen the other side yet, but she knows with unwavering certainty the horror that must be brewing: kids smeared in stale cream, sticky cake and melted chocolate; high-pitched gurgling screams that the other parents will just laugh over before dipping back to their cocktails (because Prim, budding little hostess that she is, would be pulling out all the stops for parent and child on this happy occasion); and snotty, nasty little faces and hands and limbs that will clamour for hugs she won’t have the stomach to give, regardless of whether the child is her family or not.

 

Katniss hears another blood-curdling shriek followed by a chorus of slow, indulgent giggles. Prim must have misused her credentials to slip a couple of crushed Vicodin into that cocktail mix. Katniss would have done the exact same thing.

 

What might the potential fallout be if she were to just drop the present on the doorstep, plug the doorbell, and put her high school and college years on the track team to good use? Because she might be willing to pay the price…

 

Too long she spends with her gaze darting between the garish red and orange stripes of the wrapped gift weighing heavy under her arm and the solid oak of the door. In the space between blinks the door is wrenched open from the other side, a tidal wave of air smelling of the fair she always took Prim to when she could scrounge up the cash for tickets surging out with it: bright with sunshine, fresh-mown grass and faint trails of cinnamon sitting above burned sugar, overdone hotdogs and animal manure.

 

“Katniss!” Prim grabs her by the wrist and yanks her in. She looks a little too well put together, all things considered. No one hosting a party involving more than two-dozen kids looks that good. Where are the random, unidentifiable stains marring her pretty floral dress? The loose strands falling from her ponytail? There’s a conspiracy cooking away somewhere under the hotdogs.

 

“How long have you been out there?” Prim asks, shutting the door behind them on hinges that don’t squeak or creak at all. “Riley said you were just standing there looking lost.”

 

Katniss’ glare cuts over to her nephew, blond and cherubic, with his father’s warm Nutella-brown eyes, giggling on the sofa behind his sticky-chubby baby hands. “Traitor,” she mutters.

 

But since the day he’d been born, Katniss hasn’t found it in herself to stay angry with the child, nor does she recall ever scolding him once, not even when she’d moodily watch him as a screaming, squalling baby eating into her own precious naptime. Katniss holds the gift out in front of her, a remote-controlled something or other that seemed like the best gift for the boy who already has everything, and watches with a smile as the little boy leaps forward and tears it from her loose grip. Only his mother’s gentle hand on his shoulder keeps him from bounding away without a word.

 

“What do we say, Riley?” Prim asks in that slow, questioning tone endemic to all mothers.

 

Riley smiles that wide, uninhibited baby grin, showing a gap two-teeth wide right up the front. A little nest for his straws to sit when he has a milkshake, she had told him when he lost them. He’d demanded all his drinks with straws from then on.

 

“Fank-oo, Aunty Katnish!”

 

The little boy gallops back through the house, leaving a trail of torn paper and ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ in his wake.

 

“You said you’d be here at eleven, Katniss.”

 

Katniss turns back to her sister and fights back a shudder at how like their mother she looks right now, with her arms crossed over her chest and her right foot tapping, same honey-blonde hair and sapphire-blue eyes, lips pursed as they always are in the moment before a chastisement falls from them. Only the fact that Prim seems to give a shit about her offspring separates them.

 

Katniss squares her shoulders. “I might have said something like that.”

 

“It’s quarter to twelve.”

 

“I know. Traffic.”

 

There was no traffic.

 

Prim sighs and lets the façade fall. “Whatever. You’re here now.”

 

Katniss lets her sister grab her by the arm and drag her through the grand house. It’s at least ten times the size of the house they lived in as kids—Katniss’ own shoebox of an apartment takes up maybe the same space as the foyer alone—with another layer on top and below as well, full of all sorts of bits and pieces Katniss deems foreign and completely unnecessary.

 

For Katniss, her adult life has never been a matter of accumulating all the things she never had growing up. Since she was eleven she’s always managed to get by with what few resources she has and never felt the need for anything more than that. This way, she has less to lose when it all crumbles around her; her regular pay check and three square meals now means nothing in the big, grand, unpredictable scope of the world. Something she knows by horrible, wrenching experience, and something Prim should know, too.

 

She’s always wanted to say something to Prim about the overlarge house, the three cars, the seventy-inch flat-screen, the marble countertops and the housekeeper on weekends, but she’s never been sure _what_ she wants to say. Does she want to attack the superfluous, grandiose, ridiculous existence Prim lives, having put her successful—albeit young—nursing career on hold to be a full-time wife and mother, or congratulate her for it?

 

Katniss almost trips as she gets tugged over the steps leading out of the main house into the huge, lush expanse of jewel-green backyard. The yard is her favourite thing about her sister’s home, verdant, peaceful and beautiful with a small copse of trees at the very back. Today, though…

 

Today the backyard is… loud. In volume, colour and company, decked out in all manner of unnecessary and terrifying trimmings she and her sister never had, let alone had the audacity to dream of when they were growing up. Every one of her sister’s birthdays after their father’s death and their mother’s evanescence ended in an inevitable flood of tears after being told she couldn’t have a party or invite friends over—what could an eleven-year-old Katniss cobble together for a party for six-year-olds when just the bare minimum of feeding and entertaining Prim was a daily struggle? Where Katniss would accept the reality of the situation with a solemn dignity belying her young age, Prim would wallow in heartbreak, refusing to speak to Katniss for weeks afterwards. It comes as no surprise the lengths Prim will go to for her son now, as one half of a very well-off couple, to make sure he can have anything he wants.

 

Whether it’s a good thing or not, Katniss still hasn’t decided.

 

The biggest inflatable castle Katniss has ever seen takes up a solid quarter of the backyard, three trestle tables have been lined up on the porch with a veritable buffet of sugary/salty/all-round questionable snacks. A petting zoo full of baby goats takes the corner furthest away from the crowd of overdressed mothers sipping their mimosas and bitching about their husbands.

 

But smack in the middle, surrounded by an adoring crowd of cooing and cheering children…

 

“Clowns, Prim?” she screeches. The horror in the yard—dressed in a cacophony of colours and fabrics, topped off with forest-green spray-painted hair and a tiny, sparkling top hat—looks up at her, his hands frozen in their twisting of the long, thin balloon clutched between them. Between the distance and the layers of paint on his face she’s got no idea what he’s thinking; he goes back to his tricks like nothing happened.

 

“A clown, Katniss,” Prim hisses back. “Singular. Pull yourself together. Riley wanted one. I wasn’t going to tell him no!”

 

Of course she wasn’t. Katniss glances back at the kids—Riley back front and centre already, her gift abandoned somewhere she can’t see. They’re a rapt audience, eyes following every movement the clown makes like puppies taunted with treats. When the clown finishes the balloon animal—a giraffe, Katniss thinks—and presents it to a little boy with a flourish, they burst into applause.

 

“Still weird,” she mumbles to herself. Prim scoffs.

 

“The Remarkable Mellark is the best clown in the city! He came highly recommended.”

 

“The Remarkable Mellark?” Katniss furrows her brow. The name is familiar, but she can’t pin down how. “That doesn’t sound very… clowny. Are you sure he isn’t some shitty Vegas magician? Shouldn’t he be… I don’t know, Dr. Funnybone or Sir Honks-A-Lot?”

 

Prim sighs. “Just watch him, Katniss. His audition performance—”

 

Katniss cuts her sister off, “—You _auditioned_ clowns?”

 

“Of course I auditioned clowns!” Prim retorts, incredulous, because _why wouldn’t you audition clowns, obviously_. “I didn’t want a bad one! And he’s good. Really good.”

 

Katniss casts another glance over and can’t stop the shudder that wracks through her. Since morons dressed as clowns started lurking about her favourite forest trails at night she’s lumped them all into a mental basket labelled ‘Fucked Up, Creepy and Weird’. Grown men who paint themselves up like demons to hang out with small children all day don’t sit far behind.

 

“I’m still getting weird vibes.”

 

Prim laughs. “Katniss, my liking green beans gives you weird vibes.” She sets a gentle hand between Katniss’ shoulder blades and pushes her forward. “Go watch him for a little while. You might be surprised.”

 

By a children’s clown? “Doubt it.”

 

“Then just watch the kids for me. I need to go make sure lunch is coming on all right.”

 

“The hotdogs and the fairy floss,” she says, deadpan. Katniss crosses her arms over her chest and taps her foot, trying out her own attempt to mimic their mother. “You need to go check the hotdogs and the fairy floss?”

 

“There’s going to be a proper lunch for the grown-ups.” Prim sniffs, reminding Katniss a little too much of their ‘Big City Living’ Aunt Effie. “Really, Katniss.”

 

Prim moseys back on into the house, the clutch of clucking mothers following on like all of their inputs are the pinnacle of necessity. Katniss sighs and casts forlorn glances between the glass door and the children in the yard; lumped into babysitting and it isn’t even midday yet.

 

She drags a deck chair from its spot at the table to the very edge of the yard, close enough to the baby goats that she can watch them leap over hay bales and ram each other if she wants to. The clown is still twisting balloons into animals, putting the finishing touches onto a balloon monkey clutching a balloon branch. The boy he gifts it to breaks out in a wide, joyous smile, and even from her distance away Katniss can hear his effusive, lisping thanks as he trots back to where the children are sitting and watching.

 

“Last one for now,” the clown announces in a soft, low, lilting cadence—not at all like what she had expected—as he kneels down in front of a little girl with fire engine-red ringlets falling down her back. Katniss can’t hear what the clown says to the little girl, but she can venture a guess when she hears the girl’s screeched response just fine:

 

“I wanna mockingjay!”

 

The clown stands, crossing his arms over his chest, pulling the fabric of his puffy pirate’s shirt tight over his biceps. “A mockingjay, you say?” he says, his frown exaggerated and overlarge. “I don’t know, mockingjays are kind of rare. Maybe if you tell me what they look like…?”

 

“Aunty Katnish knows all about mockingjays!” Riley cries out, clutching his own balloon sausage dog to his chest as he flings an accusing finger in her direction, Ace Attorney-style. “They’re her favourite!”

 

Like a parliament of tiny owlets, the children turn, thirty-one pairs of wide eyes fixed, unblinking, on her. Katniss offers a tiny, awkward wave.

 

“Is that so?” the clown says. “Can your aunty tell us what they look like, then?”

 

The words are for Riley, but the clown is looking right at her, his eyes a pure, undiluted blue, penetrating and comforting and familiar all in the strangest possible ways.

 

“Come on, Aunty Katnish!” Riley yells.

 

Katniss comes back to herself with a jolt like lightning, stomach twisting like she’s taken a taser to her mid-section, heat wending through her like she’s spent too long in a sauna. How long has she been staring at the clown?

 

How long has he been staring back?

 

“They’re, uh… black.” She wants to kick herself, but he hasn’t looked away, eyes still fixed on hers with a sort of intensity that Katniss can’t define. “But not a harsh black; softer, but not grey, either, sort of bluish in the right light, I guess.” The clown smiles, like he can discern her mad ramblings even when she isn’t sure about them anymore. “They have a forked tail and a long, thin beak. The males have a small, whitish crest; the females don’t.”

 

“Hmm.” The clown takes a long, thin, black balloon from a pile he must have inflated before he arrived. Katniss loses track of his hands as they twist and fold the balloon into the shape of a nondescript bird. She opens her mouth to guide him some more, but he takes a silver Sharpie from his pocket and draws on the details himself, adding defined feathers, shading for the long beak, and features too expressive to have been drawn in marker over rubber.

 

“Like this?” he calls back to her.

 

She swallows, dumbstruck. She’s never been all that into art before—the whole industry is too subjective and indefinable for her liking—but this clown’s balloon animals, with their intricate detail and patient hand and obvious care, are art. They can’t be anything else.  She can’t imagine what he might accomplish in front of an actual canvas and not a two-inch wide space of coloured rubber.

 

“Perfect.”

 

He grins and hands it to the girl, who squeals her appreciation and sprints circles around the yard, the balloon bird soaring in her outstretched hand alongside her. The clown watches the girl with a smile before clapping his hands. Like magic, the girl sits herself down, the others calm, and he has their undivided attention once again.

 

And Katniss’, too; she can’t look away. What else can this man do? The desire to keep watching is almost childlike in its intensity, tinged by something else she doesn’t want to acknowledge just yet.

 

From his head he tugs off the tiny top hat and sets it down on the table in front of him.

 

She doesn’t want to judge, but it’s a bit of an anticlimax.

 

“I’ve got another treat for you all,” he tells them, low and close like he’s imparting a secret. “Tasty, delicious treats.” His voice drops to a whisper, “I had to hide them in here, where no one could see them.” He waves a hand over the hat, and the children giggle. “Otherwise your parents would have wanted some, and we can’t have that, can we?

 

“So… just give me a second…” He wiggles his fingers into the tiny hat _à la_ Mary Poppins.

 

Katniss has a vague understanding of how the trick works—a hole in the top of the hat reaching into a hidden compartment on the table—but she still shimmies herself closer to the edge of her seat for a better look.

 

“Wait on a tic.” The clown’s face scrunches up with confusion. He rears his hand back as the children gasp and toss out frantic questions in quick, high, rising tones:

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“What happened?”

 

“ _Where are the treats_?”

 

The clown holds up a hand and the children fall silent. “Hold on a minute, everyone. There’s something else in here…” He reaches back into the opening, pretends to rummage around in there, and with a look of supreme effort, pulls forth a bright carrot.

 

“How did that get in there?” The kids giggle at the clown’s oversized frown. “Wait! Wait on, everyone. There must be something else in here…”

 

Two fingers dip in again and pull forth another carrot. Katniss listens to the rising gasps and awed sighs as the clown pulls out another, another, and another. Even she’s surprised to see him keep going until there’s a line of at least thirty carrots set out on his table.

 

The clown’s brows furrow and his lips dip even further down, the very edges of the painted lines almost level with his chin. She believes his frustration and chuckles along with the children.

 

“I didn’t pack these.” The kids erupt in playful laughter. “No, I promise! I brought cookies and cupcakes and all sorts of delicious things. Not carrots! _Bleugh_!

 

“Well.” He sighs. “That’s no good. But no harm done, I suppose, and I think I know of another set of kids who would really love these carrots.”

 

That springs forth the first true murmurs of dissent, as though the mere thought of there being other kids out there who _like_ their vegetables is some sort of sin against an invisible, yet still staunchly upheld children’s doctrine.

 

“Well, not kids like how you’re all kids,” the clown amends. “You see those baby goats over there? They’re kids, too.”

 

A child Katniss doesn’t recognise giggles and pipes up, “Goats aren’t kids, Mr. Clown.”

 

“Oh, but they are.” The clown gathers the carrots in his arms in a precarious-looking pile and sinks down on one knee in front of the children. Everything about him looks soft: his eyes, his voice, his stance, a marked contrast to the bold colours and prints of his outfit.

 

“Baby goats are called kids,” he tells his rapt audience. “Like how baby dogs are called puppies and baby cats are called kittens.

 

“Everyone come here and take a carrot or two.” Before the sentence is out of his mouth, children swarm him. “Give them to the kids over there.”

 

In a flurry of soft giggles, the children shuffle past her in single-file towards the goats’ pen off to the side, The Remarkable Mellark bringing up the rear.

 

She thinks she might have imagined it—it could have been that ridiculous face paint, after all—but she swears the clown smiled at her on his way past. The way her cheeks warm as he strides away makes her think it wasn’t an illusion at all.

 

“Careful, now,” he murmurs to the children. “These kids are still very young, so we need to be extra nice and gentle with them.”

 

The yard is almost silent, save for the crunching, garbage-disposal sounds of goats chewing. The children take their job as baby goat feeders as seriously as any adult in their nine-to-five. Katniss watches on, and that hard nut within her begin to soften. The scene is so adorable it threatens to turn Katniss’ heart to fluff—tiny adorable people sitting with tiny adorable goats—not that she’d admit it to anyone.

 

The clown walks between them, pausing at some to lean down and murmur something in close, sometimes to scratch behind a goat’s floppy ears. When he stops to talk to the crotchety-looking man in charge of the them, she knows none of this was spur of the moment. He’d planned it all.

 

Why that surprises her— _touches_ her—she can’t tell.

 

God, there’s something just so—

 

“Told you he was good,” Prim says from behind her.

 

“He’s all right,” Katniss concedes, because what else is she meant to say? Is she meant to complete her thought? Tell her sister that he’s not just good, he’s brilliant and gentle and wonderful, too? She doesn’t even know the man—she’s only been watching him for, what, not even half an hour! How can she make such snap judgements? How can she feel so certain about them?

 

Prim laughs. “High praise.” They watch for a little longer before Prim goes on, “His routine’s just about done; we’re about to set up lunch. Do you think you can keep an eye on them a little while longer? Make sure they don’t start kicking up a fuss?”

 

Katniss sighs and tries her best to seem put out, because the _I Told You So’s_ from her sister are more than she can bear even on a good day.

  
“Just let me know when lunch is ready.”

 

“I think the stampeding hoard will do that for you just fine.” Prim winks at her. “Have fun, Katniss.”

 

Prim sashays off just as the clown leads the children back to their patch in the middle of the yard. Katniss is a little too focussed on the clown, trying to poke holes in the outward—and inward—perfection that seems to just seep from him—he’s too kind, too patient, too sweet, too _everything_ to be real—that she doesn’t notice the little girl with a cascade of tight, dark curls, trip over her own tiny feet and tumble to the ground.

 

The clown notices, though. Before Katniss can even react he’s on his knees beside the little girl, checking over the long, green graze streaking up her left elbow, calming her with gentle shushes when her tears start to fall.

 

“You’ll be all right,” he tells her, his voice quiet and calming enough that even Katniss starts to relax. “Grazes hurt lots, huh?”

 

The little girl sniffs and nods. She wipes at her nose, leaving a sticky trail along her unhurt arm. Katniss cringes, but the clown takes it in stride, offering the girl a hanky from the string of about fifty up his sleeve. The girl giggles and the clown smiles.

 

“There you are.” He wipes first at her graze, then at her nose. He winks at her as he stows the hanky back up his sleeve, showing no regard for the trails of snot and nasties marring it. “Good as new.”

 

The clown rises back to his feet and brings the girl up, too, keeping hold of her hand. Something warm stirs within her as she watches on with wide, unblinking eyes and a jaw so slack she could swear it was scraping the ground. He’s a damn clown! What the hell is wrong with her? Does he even realise it? The effect he has?

 

And then— _then_ —he reaches down to the ground and pulls out, from nowhere she can discern, a bright yellow dandelion.

 

“I think you dropped something, little miss,” he says, smiling as he holds the dandelion out for the little girl to take.

 

The little girl’s big brown eyes widen. “I did?”

 

The clown chuckles and tucks it back behind her ear, where it sits bright and cheery against her dark curls. “There you are. Now you won’t lose it again.”

 

The girl gives him a look Katniss can only describe as _enamoured_. It’s adorable, and she has to bite her lip to keep her grin from spreading too wide, tuck a hand to her chest to smother the rising patter of her heart.

 

When she finds herself scoping out his left hand for a ring (and feels something in her perk when she finds none, not even a tan line or a dent) she knows she has to rein herself in before she does something stupid like… like…

 

She has no idea what.

 

Because no one, clown or otherwise, has ever made her feel like… _this,_ with the squiggly tummy, the clammy hands and the stuttering heart. She had no boyfriends through high school and college, just meaningless relationships up until now, none lasting for more than a few weeks before either Katniss or the hapless guy lost interest. How do you handle a crush, anyway? She’s never nursed one before; never had the time nor the willingness when there were so many other things in her life worth worrying about, never mind whether or not a boy was going to kiss her.

 

But his voice. His softness. His patience. His hands. His eyes...

 

 _Fuck_.

 

Katniss shoots to her feet, toppling her chair behind her, and makes a mad dash for the back door. She can feel the heat of someone’s stare on the back of her neck but she refuses to glance back and look. Besides, she’s not that far up herself; she’d guess it’s just Riley watching her, wondering what the hell’s up with his crazy aunt.

 

Katniss slips unseen past the kitchen and barricades herself in the closest bathroom. She collapses on the edge of the tub, drawing deep, slow breaths to calm her racing heart.

 

She watches herself in the low-hanging mirror as she brings her thrumming body back down again. She examines her eyes: Seam grey, just like her father’s, but lacking the twinkle his had. Hers never looked quite right on her face. Hers are too hard, too stubborn, too mature for the rest of her.

 

But she _is_ too mature to be harbouring ridiculous crushes on clowns-for-hire, that’s for certain.

 

Katniss nods to herself, decision made. It’s not as though it’s a problem, anyway. After today she won’t ever see him again. She doesn’t know his name, what he looks like, what sort of person he is, nothing of importance, anyway—so it’s not like there’s anything to miss.

 

She takes another deep breath and coaches herself in the mirror, over a much-supressed, time-weakened voice in her head telling her she’s making a mistake. He’s a clown, she tells herself, keeping her tone firm and unyielding, brokering no argument with herself. Clowns are _stupid_ and they dress _stupid_ and they paint themselves up _stupid_ , are in _no way_ good looking, and are _gross old men_ with receding hairlines. _All right? All right_.

 

So why does her stomach still feel like it’s twisting into itself?

 

She shuffles out of the bathroom and back into the hall, slamming face-first into a solid wall of chest, breathing in warm sunshine, grass and cinnamon.

 

Hands rush out from the darkness of the hallway to steady her, one firm on her shoulder, one warm on the curve of her waist. The two spots tingle under his touch. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

 

No, she’s not. Katniss laments the cruelty of the universe and its sick brand of humour. If the universe is so intent on giving out opposites, _she_ _definitely doesn’t want to win a new car anytime soon_.

 

But now that she has him up close, she can’t help but give him a proper once-over. For posterity’s sake, of course.

 

She starts at the bottom, with his overlarge shoes tied with rainbow laces, moving up and over the cappuccino-brown pants ending just above his ankles to show maximum amounts of yellow sock, to the matching tweed vest over a soft-orange—peachy, almost—puffy pirates’ shirt with the bright-yellow daisy boutonniere, ending with that ridiculous tiny top hat.

 

But up close, the ridiculous collection of clothing he wears isn’t what grabs her attention. It’s _him_ , beneath the childish trappings and the character he plays. She’s struck by the urge to grab a wet cloth and wipe all that stupid makeup off to see what he looks like underneath, if she’s right in her guesses. Up close she can make out the contours of his jawline, his cheekbones, the strong set of his chin, the pale goldness of his skin, the softness of his smile.

 

When she gets back to his eyes, they’re looking back down at her, too, an amused glint dancing there.

 

Fuck, was she staring again?

 

She pulls herself out of his hold and falls back against the wall. The distance between their bodies is still negligible, still warm and almost homey.

 

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him, feeling a burst of heat alight on her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

 

“Oh, don’t be sorry!” he assures her, chuckling. “I’m a clown. You can stare at me any time you want. I mean, look at me.”

 

She tries hard not to. She focuses her gaze somewhere above his head—and notes with a weird brand of satisfaction that he’s not too much taller than she is, just by a couple of inches—and lands on the tiny top hat.

 

Bright red and covered in glitter which sloughs off into his hair, leaving him sparkling and glimmering in the narrow beam of light. She can’t help it:

 

Katniss bursts out laughing, loud peals that have her wondering at the state of her mental health.

 

The clown’s painted lips stretch into an amused grin. “Something on your mind?” he asks.

 

She takes a deep, long breath, a few last chuckles falling from her lips. “Oh, nothing. It’s just… your hat. It’s…”

 

“What? You don’t like my hat?” He feigns offence, unclipping the stupid thing and pulling it off. In his large hands it looks even smaller, even sillier.

 

Katniss shakes her head. “No, I kind of love it. That’s the problem. Where did you hide the carrots?”

 

He grins at her before affixing it back atop his head. She can see light roots where he hasn’t managed to finagle his hair spray. Blond? Maybe light brown?

 

“Trade secrets.” He winks. “If I told you I’d have to… well, you know the rest.”

 

She quirks a brow at him. “Good to know where the rest of the world stands with The Remarkable Mellark.”

 

“Some secrets need to be protected. And it’s Peeta.”

 

He holds out his hand, waiting for her to take it. It’s an odd sensation; she watches her own hand, like it’s something external from herself, rise up. Sees her own fingers like they’re someone else’s wrap around his.

 

But the heat of his hand sears into her in a way that brings her back to herself with a jolt like lightning. He’s standing so close to her in that narrow hallway, close enough that she could count out each individual lash if she wanted to. Close enough that she can feel the warmth of all of him around her. Close enough that she could lean up on her tiptoes and kiss him if she didn’t feel so rooted to the spot.

 

Not that she’d do that, of course.

 

“Katniss,” she says, cursing the unsteady quality of her voice.

 

“It’s nice to meet you, Katniss.” His grin spreads wide, blue eyes sparkling. “Or should I say, Aunty Katnish?”

 

She feels the moment fall away from them with a snap.

 

“Don’t you start.” She groans, rolling her eyes. Since Riley first started talking, pronounced lisp and all, _Aunty Katnish_ has become a running joke at every family function. If she wasn’t so fond of her nephew she would have told him off long before, like she had when she put her cousin in his place when his insistence on nicknaming her ‘Catnip’ tipped her patience right over the edge.

 

“Don’t be like that.” He laughs. “Besides, it’s pretty.”

 

“What is, Katnish?”

 

He laughs again. Katniss might stop and wonder if he’d been slipped something during his performance if he didn’t seem so genuine. “Katnish is adorable. But Katniss is pretty. The actual flowers are, too. Pretty, but unusual.”

 

“Thank my parents. It’s not like I had any say in it.” The statement comes off far brusquer than she intends, but he doesn’t seem to care. He just grins again, like they’re good friends sharing a casual conversation. Can anything offend the man?  She’s done nothing but be a cow so far and he hasn’t seemed to mind.

 

“I know exactly what you mean,” he tells her in a low voice, as though he’s letting her in on some sort of secret. He draws away from her just enough to send a slant of light from the kitchen at the end of the hall between their bodies. The warmth of him leaves her and she misses it at once.

 

“So, Katniss.” He fiddles with the hem of a sleeve, tugging at a loose thread there. “Do you have a child out there?”

 

“What?” She pales even at the mere pairing of her name and the word ‘child’ in the same sentence. “No. Just… my nephew, the birthday boy.”

 

She can tell he’s trying to be nonchalant, and she’ll concede that he gives a valiant effort, but Katniss can still see the moment his eyes brighten and his smile widens, and feels the moment she warms again in response, embracing it with something like relief.

 

“That’s great. He looks a lot like you, actually.”

 

Katniss scoffs. “Riley looks nothing like me.” Riley is all Prim, blond hair and fair skin, with his chocolate-brown eyes coming straight from Thom. There is nothing of Katniss in the way Riley looks.

 

Peeta looks at her in a way that makes her think he’s seeing through, or beyond her. It’s such a critical gaze that she wants to shrink back, but she can’t bring herself to do so. Instead, she wants to revel in it; she wants him to look at her that way all the time.

 

“I think he does,” he says at last. “In the shape of his eyes, and the little flick of his nose. All you.”

 

Katniss narrows her eyes at him, brows furrowed and lips scowling. “Are you flirting with me?”

 

He smiles, though the glint in his eyes dims just a little bit at the accusation. “Maybe a little. Is that a problem?”

 

“No, I suppose not. It’s just you’re all…” She waves a frantic hand at him.

 

“All in character?” he finishes for her, laughing. Again. Katniss decides she likes the sound; it’s just as warm as the rest of him. “Well, if you’d show me to the bathroom I could wash this all off and maybe resume flirting with you later, not in character, if you think you might be interested?”

 

She is. Very interested. And that’s all part of the problem. She’s never had to play coy, never had to flirt back. She doesn’t even know if she knows how…

 

“Hello? Katniss?”

 

Fuck. She’s doing it again.

 

“Where on earth do you drift off to?” he asks her, grinning.

 

“Sorry,” she says, cringing. She might as well strip down to her panties and launch herself into his arms for how obvious she’s being.

 

“Like I said, don’t be.” He points to the door behind her, still standing ajar, clean white light slanting through and lighting their feet. “Is that the bathroom?”

 

Katniss moves out from his shadow and steps off to the side. “Right through there.”

 

He shuffles past her, his body brushing up along hers. Katniss feels herself shiver.

 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, not sounding sorry at all. Neither is she.

 

Peeta leans against the doorframe, one arm propped up above him. Under the thin fabric of his shirt, pulled taut by his posture, she watches the twitch and play of his muscles, maps out the lines and narrow curves of his body. Fuck, clowns that look that good should be criminal.

  
“Will you be here when I get back?” he asks.

 

“What, out of the bathroom?” Her brow furrows in confusion. “Of course I’ll still be here. I mean, not right _here_ , here, but I’ll be around.”

 

He laughs again, a softer sound this time, more like a lazy chuckle. “I’m leaving as soon as I’ve changed. But I'll be coming back. I have an important delivery to make, after all.”

 

“Clown delivery service as well?” Katniss pretends to ponder the possibilities. “That could probably work, you know.”

 

He strokes a hand over his smooth chin, flaking away the paint there. “It probably would, and I should definitely add it to my repertoire, but that’s not it. I have bring back the cake.”

 

“The cake?”

 

“Yeah, I made Riley’s cake, too. Mellark’s bakery?”

 

 _Mellark’s Bakery._ There’s why the name was so familiar. She could live off the cheese buns they sell there and damn the consequences. But she’s never seen him in there before. Or maybe she has? The face paint hides his features a little too well, but the contours of his face, and his eyes, now that she’s had a good look, are familiar. Is he the gorgeous blond guy that seems to be, by some glorious design, behind the counter every time she visits? The one that makes sweet, silly small-talk with her? The one that plucks the biggest, cheesiest cheese buns from the cabinet for her without being asked? The one that smiles at her like… like…

 

He runs a hand through his hair, staining it green. “I’m, uh… I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you in there a few times?”

 

Her cheeks heat. Yep. Definitely the same guy.

 

“Yeah. I think… I think I remember who you are now. I thought your surname was familiar.”

 

He grins again, but it’s different this time, less Ronald MacDonald and more… intent. Determined, but soft. Indefinable and certain all at once.

 

With a flourish, he pulls a bouquet of tulips, tied with soft orange ribbon, out of thin air (from his sleeve, but for the sake of the moment she’ll pretend not to notice) and presents it to her, sinking down to one knee and bowing his head.

 

“How many bouquets do you have stashed up there?” she asks as she takes it. She almost brings it to her nose before realising they’re handmade, crafted from paper. The textured paint on the makeshift tulip petals is as smooth and velveteen as the real thing and twice as beautiful.

 

“Just the one, in case of emergency,” he tells her with a wink.

 

She gives him a bland look. “Emergency?”

 

He shrugs and smiles. Again. The expression so easy and carefree and natural on him that she’d think him born with that smile, as much a part of him as his arm or leg.

 

“Never know when you might run into the girl of your dreams. And I can’t wear long sleeves at the bakery.”

 

Before she can say anything to _that_ that isn’t spelled out in a painful flush over her cheeks, Peeta steps further into the bathroom, pushing the door closed behind him. Before he shuts it, he smiles at her, and it’s a different one again: less the smile he’d been flashing all day and more… like it’s just for her.

 

“I hope to see more of you, Katniss.”

 

She smiles, sensing an unfamiliar bubble of hope rise in her. She clutches the fake bouquet close and feels her cheeks warm. But for the first time in her life, the sensations aren’t terrifying; instead, she embraces them with a tentative sort of anticipation, holds them tight so they can’t fly away.

 

“You definitely will, Peeta.”

**Author's Note:**

> To old readers and new, I hope you had a wonderful holiday season :)
> 
> As is evident, I'm sure, I'm still quite new to the wonderful world of Everlark fan fic despite having been a fan of THG for some time now. I have plenty of stories lined up for these two, so I hope you'll all stick around :)
> 
> I'm ally147writes on Tumblr if anyone wants to chat (or fangirl, I'm down for that, too!)


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